If it made you panic, rage, or rush… it probably bypassed your cognitive defenses. In the latest issue of Deceptive Minds, I dig into the dark cognitive malware of emotional hijacking: how scammers, manipulators, and even well-meaning voices use fear, urgency, outrage, and hope to short-circuit your critical thinking. Inside: 🧠 Why your emotions beat your rational mind to the punch 📞 How scam messages and panic phishing bypass logic 📣 What viral rage-bait and fear-mongering have in common 🔥 ...
May 28, 2025•13 min
Some lies try hard to fool you. Others just make it easy for you to believe them. That’s the danger of cognitive fluency: the simpler something feels, the more likely we are to think it’s true. In the latest issue of Deceptive Minds, I explore: Why fake documents with grainy photos often seem more real than verified ones How anti-intellectualism and slogan-based disinfo campaigns thrive on fluency bias And what makes even seasoned professionals fall for staged “leaks,” forged letters, and photo ...
May 20, 2025•12 min
Hey friends, Let’s start with a weird truth: People don’t fall for things because they’re true. They fall for things because they’re plausible. That’s the dark magic of deception — it doesn’t need to be airtight, or flawless, or even particularly clever. It just needs to feel true enough. Something your brain can accept without asking too many questions. Welcome to the Plausibility Effect — the sneaky cognitive glitch that powers scams, fuels misinformation, and makes even the dumbest conspiraci...
May 14, 2025•12 min
Welcome to issue #3 of Deceptive Minds: a newsletter about how we are fooled, how we fool ourselves, and what we can do about it. In this week's episode: 🚨 Your attention is under attack! 🚨 From WWII rubber tanks to 2023’s phantom Paris bedbugs, the first strike of any scam is the same: steal your gaze, shape your reality. This issue of Deceptive Minds is all about “attention theft”—how con-artists, phishers, and AI-powered tricksters hijack that split-second between stimulus and thought…and w...
May 05, 2025•14 min
Hey friends! Here's issue 2 of Deceptive Minds: a newsletter about how we are fooled, how we fool ourselves, and what we can do about it. 🔥 Since starting this newsletter last week, we're already closing in on 3,000 subscribers to the print edition! 🔥 Huge thanks to everyone who's jumped in early! This week, I'm diving into what I call the “artifacts of deception,” and why the flashy stuff (deepfakes, fake emails, cloned voices) isn’t the real trick you need to watch for. Hope you enjoy this e...
Apr 29, 2025•12 min
Hey listeners, Perry Carpenter here. Yeah, it's been a while since I've posted this feed, but I've got something exciting that I think you'll be interested in. It's the audio version of a newsletter that I recently started. The newsletter is called Deceptive Minds, and it's all about how we are fooled, how we fool ourselves, and what we can do about it. In other words, it's the exact right newsletter for the 8th Layer Insights audience. So for the next little bit at least, I'm going to post thes...
Apr 29, 2025•7 min
Note: We're posting Perry's new show, "The FAIK Files", to this feed through the end of 2024. This will give you a chance to get a feel for the new show and subscribe to the new feed if you want to keep following in 2025. Welcome back to the show that keeps you informed on all things artificial intelligence and natural nonsense. In our holiday episode, Mason opens a rather unique Christmas present from Perry, we invite a special guest to help explain the infamous "Paperclip Maximizer" thought ex...
Dec 27, 2024•40 min
Note: We're posting Perry's new show, "The FAIK Files", to this feed through the end of the year. This will give you a chance to get a feel for the new show and subscribe to the new feed if you want to keep following in 2025. Welcome back to the show that keeps you informed on all things artificial intelligence and natural nonsense. Warning: today's episode gets a bit dark as we chat with seasoned prosecutor and founder of Operation Shamrock, Erin West, about a devastating combination of attacks...
Dec 20, 2024•1 hr 1 min
Note: We're posting Perry's new show, "The FAIK Files", to this feed through the end of the year. This will give you a chance to get a feel for the new show and subscribe to the new feed if you want to keep following in 2025. Welcome back to The FAIK Files--- the show about artificial intelligence and natural nonsense! In this week's episode: Mason shares how ChatGPT became an unexpected hero in solving his home networking and studio challenges Perry dives into the mysterious case of "David Maye...
Dec 13, 2024•55 min
Note: We're posting Perry's new show, "The FAIK Files", to this feed through the end of the year. This will give you a chance to get a feel for the new show and subscribe to the new feed if you want to keep following in 2025. Welcome back to The FAIK Files— the show about artificial intelligence and natural nonsense! In this week’s episode: Mason has an update on last week's shocking story of Google Gemini’s alleged threats against a user. Is this a glitch, a hack, or something more sinister? We...
Dec 06, 2024•54 min
Note: We're posting Perry's new show, "The FAIK Files", to this feed through the end of the year. This will give you a chance to get a feel for the new show and subscribe to the new feed if you want to keep following in 2025. Happy FAIKs-giving everyone! Welcome to the newly renovated and relaunched FAIK Files podcast. On this week's episode, Perry & Mason cover Anthropic's recent hiring of an employee focused on AI well-being, an AI grandmother from hell (for scammers), and Google's Gemini chat...
Nov 29, 2024•52 min
This is Part Three of a ten-part miniseries exploring Perry Carpenter's latest book, FAIK: A Practical Guide to Living in a World of Deepfakes, Disinformation, and AI-Generated Deceptions. Each episode kicks off with a dramatized reading of the "Whispers from the Static" vignette that opens the chapter, followed by an in-depth conversation with Perry Carpenter and Mason Amadeus, where they unpack the chapter's themes and real-world implications. Get the Book (Amazon Associate Link): FAIK: A Prac...
Oct 07, 2024•32 min
This is Part Two of a ten-part miniseries exploring Perry Carpenter's latest book, FAIK: A Practical Guide to Living in a World of Deepfakes, Disinformation, and AI-Generated Deceptions. Each episode kicks off with a dramatized reading of the "Whispers from the Static" vignette that opens the chapter, followed by an in-depth conversation with Perry Carpenter and Mason Amadeus, where they unpack the chapter's themes and real-world implications. Get the Book (Amazon Associate Link): FAIK: A Practi...
Sep 30, 2024•30 min
This is Part One of a ten-part miniseries exploring Perry Carpenter's latest book, FAIK: A Practical Guide to Living in a World of Deepfakes, Disinformation, and AI-Generated Deceptions. Each episode kicks off with a dramatized reading of the "Whispers from the Static" vignette that opens the chapter, followed by an in-depth conversation with Perry Carpenter and Mason Amadeus, where they unpack the chapter's themes and real-world implications. Get the Book (Amazon Associate Link): FAIK: A Practi...
Sep 30, 2024•32 min
In this conversation, Perry sits down with Dr. Bilyana Lilly to discuss her new book Digital Mindhunters (Coming Oct 30) and the intersection of cybersecurity, disinformation, and AI. She describes the narrative structure of her book, navigating a world of cyber threats and influence operations, and the evolving landscape of disinformation with AI amplifying threats. Dr. Lilly emphasizes the importance of awareness and education in combating misinformation and highlights the global threats posed...
Sep 17, 2024•59 min•Season 5Ep. 10
In this episode, Perry catches-up with Stephanie (Snow) & JC Carruthers. They talk about social engineering, the DEFCON Social Engineering Community / Village, and share their favorite (and most embarrassing) social engineering stories. Perry also gives a quick update on his recent exploits entering an AI chatbot into the Social Engineering Village CTF, speaking at the DEFCON AI Village, and the release of his new book, FAIK: A Practical Guide to Living in a World of Deepfakes, Disinformation, a...
Sep 03, 2024•58 min•Season 5Ep. 9
On this episode, Perry gets to sit down with Ed Skoudis to discuss the simplicity and complexities of cybersecurity ethics. Ed's new book is The Code of Honor: Embracing Ethics in Cybersecurity. Guest: Ed Skoudis (LinkedIn) (Twitter) (Website) Books and References: The Code of Honor: Embracing Ethics in Cybersecurity, by Paul J. Maurer and Ed Skoudis The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel: Genius, Power, and Deception on the Eve of World War I, by Douglas Brunt The Cybersecurity Code (downloadable...
Jul 30, 2024•55 min•Season 5Ep. 8
On this episode, Perry gets to sit down with Jon Gillham. Jon is the founder and CEO of Originality.ai -- an AI content detection platform designed to help website owners, content marketers, writers and publishers hit 'publish' with integrity in the world of generative AI. In this interview, we get the lowdown on how AI content detection works, what it is good at, and where some of the current limits are. Guest: Jon Gillham (LinkedIn) (Twitter) (Website) Books and References: AI Content Detector...
Jul 09, 2024•50 min•Season 5Ep. 7
On this episode, Perry gets to sit down with investigative journalist, author, and podcaster, Geoff White. They discuss Geoff's new book, "Rinsed: From Cartels to Crypto: How the Tech Industry Washes Money for the World's Deadliest Crooks", the state of global cybercrime, and (everybody's favorite topic) artificial intelligence. Guest: Geoff White (LinkedIn) (Twitter) Books and References: Rinsed: From Cartels to Crypto: How the Tech Industry Washes Money for the World's Deadliest Crooks, by Geo...
Jun 04, 2024•52 min•Season 5Ep. 6
In this episode, Perry sits down with award winning cybersecurity author, George Finney to discuss his recent book, Project Zero Trust. This is a broad discussion that hits on the concepts of Zero Trust, George's approach to writing the book, his passion for storytelling, and much more. Guest: George Finney (LinkedIn) (Website) Books and References: Project Zero Trust: A Story about a Strategy for Aligning Security and the Business, by George Finney Well Aware: Master the Nine Cybersecurity Habi...
May 07, 2024•57 min•Season 5Ep. 5
In this episode Perry Carpenter sits down with Rachel Tobac to debrief after her recent KB4-CON session, "How I'd Hack You Live" where she... well... hacked Perry live. Perry and Rachel explore how age-old deception techniques are being revamped for the digital age. The discussion spans the future of social engineering, the increasing role of AI in security, and a few other fun bits. Guest: Rachel Tobac (LinkedIn) (Twitter / X) (Website) Books and References (Books are Amazon Associate Links and...
Apr 09, 2024•36 min•Season 5Ep. 4
On this episode Perry sits down with Dr. Matthew Canham to explore ways in which AI can be weaponized against us, and how age old social engineering tactics can be used to trick large language models. Guest: Dr. Matthew Canham (LinkedIn) (Website) Books and References (Books are Amazon Associate Links and help support the show): Cognitive Security Institute YouTube Channel Cognitive Security Institute website YouTube video: BlackHat Presentation -- Me and My Evil Digital Twin: The Psychology of ...
Mar 19, 2024•57 min•Season 5Ep. 3
On this episode Perry sits down with Jeremy Treadwell, a people-first technologist and futurist, to get the lowdown on how a futurist approaches the world. Guest: Jeremy Treadwell (LinkedIn) (Twitter) Books and References (Books are Amazon Associate Links and help support the show): YouTube Video: What UX/UI Taught Me about Improving Security Awareness [SANS Security Awareness Summit 2022], Jeremy Treadwell YouTube Video: Reimagine the Future of Data, Privacy + Security with Technologist Jeremy ...
Feb 27, 2024•42 min•Season 5Ep. 2
Welcome to season 5 of 8th Layer Insights! To celebrate Valentine's Day, Perry sits down with Emmy winning reporter Kerry Tomlinson to talk about the time she turned the tables on a romance scammer. Guest: Kerry Tomlinson (LinkedIn) (Website) (YouTube) Books and References: YouTube video: Inside a romance scam: how to make a catfisher sing YouTube video: Scammers are stealing people's faces for live video calls National Cybersecurity Alliance : Online Romance and Dating Scams National Cybersecur...
Feb 13, 2024•58 min•Season 5Ep. 1
On this episode, Perry celebrates the one year birthday of ChatGPT by taking a look at AI from technological, philosophical, and folkloric perspectives. We see how AI was formed based on human words and works, and how it can now shape the future of human legend and belief. Guests: Brandon Karpf, Vice President at N2K Networks (LinkedIn) (Website) Dr. Lynne S. McNeill, Associate Professor at Utah State University (LinkedIn) (Twitter) Dr. John Laudun, Professor at University of Louisiana at Lafaye...
Nov 30, 2023•1 hr 8 min•Season 4Ep. 10
Let's face it. Most of us have a love/hate relationship with technology and technological advances. We dream about the new thing... but when it arrives, we are usually a little disappointed. Many of us also lament the constant erosion of privacy, the changes in social norms, and more. And, little-by-little, we allow those aspects of new technology to make us numb. We accept the cognitive dissonance of not totally being happy with the trade-offs; yet we still make the trade. In this episode, we e...
Oct 24, 2023•54 min
On today's show, Perry sits down with Rick Howard to discuss Rick's new book and the concept of "First Principles" as they apply in the domain of cybersecurity. Rick Howard is the CSO of N2K and the Chief Analyst, and Senior Fellow at the N2K Cyber, formerly CyberWire. His past lives include CSO at Palo Alto Networks, CISO at TASC, the GM at Verisign/iDefense, the Counterpane SOC Director, and the Commander of the Army's Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT). Rick served 25 years in the Army, ...
Oct 10, 2023•43 min•Season 4Ep. 9
If you’ve been listening to this show for a while, you’ll know that we’ve touched on the topic of Open Source Intelligence (otherwise known as OSINT) several times. It is an area of information security that penetration testing that’s been getting quite a bit of attention over the past several years. When you think about the digital world we live in, where we have a proliferation of personal, organizational, and governmental data on the internet...and the simple fact that data likes to leak…we c...
Sep 26, 2023•36 min•Season 4Ep. 8
Listen in as Perry Carpenter & Dr. Jessica Barker present their joint session, "Conversational Security Awareness" at the SANS Managing Human Risk Summit. ... and stay tuned after the presentation for a quick conversation between Perry, Jessica, and Lance Spitzner (SANS) as they discuss themes from this year's event. Guests: Dr. Jessica Barker (LinkedIn) (Twitter) Jeremy Treadwell (LinkedIn) (Twitter) Lance Spitzner (LinkedIn) (Twitter) Additional Resources: Jessica Barker's great blog post summ...
Sep 12, 2023•59 min•Season 4Ep. 7
On today's show, Perry sits down with Jayson E. Street to discuss his unique blend of social engineering, physical penetration testing, and security awareness. Jayson refers to this as being trained by a simulated adversary. At the heart of Jayson's method is intense boldness in his approach to social engineering and penetration testing coupled with an equally intense passion for helping his clients and their employees improve their overall security posture and mindsets. It's about education rat...
Aug 29, 2023•1 hr 8 min•Season 4Ep. 6
